The 15,000-volunteer business plan

Banners like the one here proclaim the need for 15,000 volunteers need by Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The deadline has passed, and 25,000 people are expected to be short-listed and interviewed before the 15,000 are selected. It's a tremendous opportunity to be involved, and it apes somewhat the 70,000 London Olympic Games 'Gamesmakers' of last year.

Olympic rowing gold medallist Katherine Grainger believes volunteers 'make the games' while Sebastian Coe said volunteering was "vital" to the event: "The difference between a good Games and a great Games is the volunteers. Volunteering is vital because a Games simply cannot be delivered without them. It is too complex and too complicated."

It is though a business model predicated on free labour. Times are tough, and a living wage for 15,000 cannot be sustainable - the positions are low-skill temporary positions after all. People know what they're getting themselves in for, and clearly very many are willing to work for free and work for the glamour, the fun or the experience. The Games needs them, and while we're far away from an ideal world, it'd be nice to think of a better way where no business plan needed free labour, and where every organisation which needed volunteers could recruit them.